Usmivka

I have no doubt that people exist who bill themselves as exorcists. Or astrologers. Or mediums, etc. So I'm thinking you meant something else.

I don't know what works for you, I just think there is less choice if trying to move in September. Leases tend to start on the first of the month, not the last, so unless you OK without a home lined up before classes start, Sept 1 (maybe Sept 15) is the relevant date. The neighborhood will really depend on your preferred mode of transit/travel time, cost restrictions, and preferred "vibe." If you are unsure of the lay of the land, it wouldn't be the worst idea to go early and stay in a sublet while you scope things out, or even stay in UW housing for a quarter. Where I live has a big impact on my sanity and quality of work--if you are the same, it is worth some extra time to make a careful decision. Feel free to message me if you don't find the below useful, and you'll hear differing opinions from others that reply I'm sure. My feeling is that Westlake is pretty expensive, but most of the housing through there is brand new and advertised to techies working in South Lake Union (perhaps explaining the markup). That area didn't have much rental stock even a few years ago (mostly houseboats), so I'm not on top of it anymore. It could take 45 minutes or more by bus or car in rush hour because you have to go via Fremont and then cut East on one of only a couple main roads, or go around the other side and meet the 520 traffic in the Montlake cut. Capitol Hill had decent bus service (no idea what state it is in now, there were some pretty draconian cuts to public transit circa 2012) but you will deal with the Montlake bridge, which can be a pain during boating season (its a drawbridge and natural traffic constriction). Greenlake is far from the UW, but maybe a little shorter travel time than Westlake. Parts of Ravenna are closeish, an easy bike ride. I've indicated this earlier but my preferred neighborhoods while working at the UW were Phinney Ridge, Fremont, and Ballard. I think Ballard near the main drag is on average more expensive now though. While connected to Lake Union, the strip of water the bridges cross is the "ship canal," an artificial lock and ship ladder system built by the Army Corp of Engineers in ~1917.

1. No, see a number of my and others' posts in the first several pages of this thread. Washingtonians mostly say terrible things about the weather to scare off people thinking about relocating from Califronia ; ) But it does rain about 30% more than in the Bay area (http://www.usclimatedata.com/). 2. I never owned rain boots or a rain coat until moving to Boston (where it rains 30% more than Seattle on average and when it does rain is much heavier, see above link). But if you were ruining boots in the Bay area, it probably won't be better for you in Seattle. November can be rough, but much of the rest of the year the precipitation mostly comes down as sprinkling or mist which isn't going to soak you (and often overnight when most people aren't out anyway). 3. I'd personally advocate going in person earlier. Seattle doesn't have the same September 1 housing rush as some college dominated cities, but it is still not the greatest time to be looking. Probably you don't want to wait until you arrive for classes to find a home, so maybe shoot for July. Alaska airlines frequently has fare sales with $90-110 round trips from Oakland/San Francisco to Seattle.

Jumping in really late here, but I agree that your fit in a specific lab should be the highest consideration. In either case you will have some sane, likeable grad students in your peer group to help you stay grounded. Much of the reputation surrounding either department is derived form the undergrad experience, which isn't terribly applicable to you. If you are concerned about fitting in and staying happy, MIT has one of the largest fractions of international grad students in the country (42%, http://web.mit.edu/iso/stats_14-15/general.shtml) and a lot of financial, social, support, and health resources for international students compared to the other places I have experience. I think Harvard has similar resources for international students.

In case you are still lurking, as of last week all invites for visiting weekend were out, including some "late" choices. Not to say more acceptances can't come later, but if you haven't heard yet I wouldn't expect to hear more until the second week of March.

The earth science subforum got particularly oily this year. I've also noticed that the biology forum has a number of microbial ecologists/biogeochemists/earth science applicants this year that feel out of place there. Perhaps we ought to make a dedicated thread for non-geology centric earth science within the subforum next year, but it varies so much between application cycles I'm not sure that will actually be useful.

Either a plat fee or a percentage, and also city and state dependent because of the costs to register the deed with the city and state. For my purchase it was about 1% of the mortgage value. It also depends if you decide to buy "points" to reduce your interest rate (I wouldn't, but there are lots of editorial articles out there). You should shop around, try a big bank, a community bank, and a credit union. Apparently people rarely price compare with mortgages, which seems silly to me since the difference could be thousands of dollars.

University of Washington has a later deadline for Spring quarter admission (apply late, start late).

If you are in the general area and have the opportunity to speak in person, why wouldn't you? You'll both get a better feel for each other that way. Your prospective advisor didn't ask you to make a special cross country trip--he just asked that you interview in person if it is geographically convenient (for me, that would mean a day trip via car or public transit). If you are local (or in the area for another school visit and could easily add a half day to your trip) and you decline this request, I can't see it reflecting positively on your motivation to work in his lab.

20% down is the standard for non-traditional mortgages--ie, all grad students, since it is not possible to start grad school and make the de facto requirements of being salaried or with 5 years of work history on current job/continuing job. I'm not sure international status makes things any worse than that, other than visa complications. So (even though it doesn't apply to you) if you were to say, aim for a $50k house, that would mean $10k downpayment, plus any mortgage origination and other bank fees, plus your first year or two of property taxes in advance to be held in trust and paid by the bank.

If you want to call it that. A waitlist implies that if someone else drops, there is a line to fill that spot. It doesn't sound that organized. Their ambitions are greater than their funding, sounds like.

To clarify, just because a slot is unfilled, does not mean there will be an "extra" slot the following application season. Funding associated with that position may get reallocated when it is clear there won''t be a grad student using it. My program over-admits assuming many people will choose to go elsewhere--when they decline, further invites are not necessarily offered if the target number of students accepts. This depends on the funding source though, if an individual prof has money (as opposed to a university fellowship) they can sometimes try again until they get someone to work for them.

Invites went out a week or two ago to at least some people. I don't know about this year, but most years they go out over a period of a week or so, and are often preceeded by an informal call from the sponsoring PI. The latest the initial invites go out is late February because the visiting weekend is early March. Some years there are a few additional invites in the Spring after others decline their offers. My understanding is that there are about 25 invites this year with an expected enrollment of 15 or so across all departments.

None that I know of, but some microbial ecology fieldwork. I guess there was mud involved, which has some minerals in it...

Good link. This sort of (sometimes unrecognized) bias makes a big difference to how TAs and younger profs (but apparently not older faculty) are perceived re knowledge, competency, and preparedness. Because I don't think I've seen it pointed out in this thread (instead it's focused on male students), this sort of implicit bias is not limited to male students either, the linked study and other educational research studies suggest that female students similarly rate female instructors lower than their male counterparts of similar teaching skill (or rate the males higher if you prefer to think of it that way). If I think back to how I've perceived instructors at the college and graduate school level, I have been more likely to perceive young female TAs and faculty instructors as unprepared, poor instructors, or unduly harsh/combative, and I've been more likely to skip their classes and come up with flimsy excuses or otherwise act in a contrarian manner. It's possible some of those instructors really were bad at their jobs, but I rarely acted the same way with an equivalent male instructor (again, trying to more objectively evaluate this years later, and memory is fickle). I wonder how many of of those participating in this thread, male or female, would come to the same conclusion looking back now?

I know why people most often get rejected from my current program: funding. Life is a lot easier if you bring in an external fellowship.

Absolutely. I think things in your price range also exist within Boston city limits. I bought a condo for (significantly) less than that in JP in 2013, and it was one of six or seven I looked at around the city all under $250k. Probably half were fixer-uppers, and all but one were liveable as is (ie any projects to improve value or make things more comfortable could have waited 6 months or more). My personal experience was that the mortgage on any of these places was about two-thirds what I would otherwise pay in rent for a one or two bedroom apartment shared with my partner. As telknuru pointed out, there are other nearby towns and cities more convenient to BC, so you aren't (necessarily) locked into the most expensive markets--if you mean within 40 minutes of BC as I think you do (rather than Boston), then you could live out in the sticks and buy a house at that price.

You mean funded by departments, not professors, right? An RA position is linked to a specific research grant, not so a TA position usually.

I know at least one student previously admitted to Stanford EESS for geobiology with no geology background. Given the nature of geobiology as a field and the type of students entering these programs nationwide (see above), I doubt she was an exception. Also, the researchers I know at EESS are not particularly rock-focused, so a general geology background would not necessarily be useful to the work that goes on in all labs. I think the suggestion that you need any geophysics background to do geobiology is particularly off-base. If you are truly concerned that this will set you back, you could take an evening intro geology course at your local community college this spring or summer.

This is true. I personally believe most students can study and master this material, but the challenge (and indeed what is being tested, even if inadvertantly) is the ability to solve these specific problems rapidly and take shortcuts to eliminate unproductive avenues. In a phrase, test taking strategies.This may or may not be important in your graduate career, and may or may not reflect on your ability to generalize these skills to how you approach graduate coursework and research. I don't think that is the intent. As GeoDude pointed out, the GRE is not a good means of differentiating between strong applicants, because most strong applicants will have high GRE scores. It doesn't reflect positively on someone that they did not spend the time to learn how to take this specific test and do well. But beyond the boundary conditions that admissions committees use, I don't think a few questions either way can reflect negatively on an applicant either. This is all generalizing of course, because there are strong students and researchers who are not favored to succeed at a 4 hour test, and the ability to do so doesn't reflect at all on the former for mental or physical reasons. Maintaining focus while jumping between dozens of questions on minute time-spans is not a natural recipe for success for most people--this sort of behavior in "multi-taskers" is associated with lower performance on tasks (search "multi-tasking poor performance" and read any of the first score of results). I personally found the GRE (and similar, long, high-stakes tests) to be very draining. The biggest issue for me was physical--I get low blood-sugar in this sort of stamina taxing scenario (seriously, my fingers and face go all tingly). Since food is banned in the test rooms there is not a whole lot I can do about that! But moral of the story, if you aren't evidencing you can succeed a specific short-term task you can prepare for (the GRE) or on your time (GPA), it is much harder to make the case that you will succeed in grad school. Not impossible with great letters of rec and research experiences, just a lot harder.

That was just the first round admits for visiting weekend, and just EAPS (I don't know if you applied to one of the other subunits with separate admissions, like PAOC or the Joint Program). Admissions will still be offered to a number of applicants later as the first admits start to decline (historically, about 30-50% will choose someplace else).

MIT sent out visiting weekend invites recently if anyone was lurking on that.

The most important part of interviews is to see how you'd fit within your lab and department (and for them to evaluate the same). That fit can make or break your time in grad school, so I'd focus on deciding whether these are people you'd enjoy working with and will foster your success, rather than trying to impress people with your scientific background or research ideas. There are some generic threads about this scattered around in the forum. Assuming the UTs work the same as the other similar research focused institutions I know something about, top picks hear back first, and most folks who are admissable but not top picks then get to wait for weeks (for horse-trading between profs that want a specific student) or months (for the first picks to decline and the university to move onto its backup list). Since first picks at one place are often top choices wherever they apply, that means a relative handful of people sit on most offers of admissions in a given field, while the majority of (eventually) attending students will have to wait a bit for the first draft to make up their minds.

In your case (Canadian) you'd best be applying for an NSERC fellowship. International students are much more expensive than domestic at state schools (like UNR). Luckily for you, Canada is one of relatively few countries that allows federal funding to be used internationally (eg US). If you come in with this money you are a much more desirable candidate because your advisor doesn't have to cover your stipend.

Ditto Also, I am also in the "teaching is work" camp. My teaching experience is more likely to get me a job than my research. I'm doing just fine in my field and with publications, but I'm unlikely to be the top graduate globally in my subfield, and even if I was a position that I'm a shoe-in for is unlikely to come open near the time I'm done with my postdoc--like most graduates, a job isn't waiting with my name on it. Most available positions I see advertised specifically include teaching components, request things like teaching portfolios or an example class with their students, and make clear that this is an important consideration to hiring committees. While (some) major R1-type instituions still care about research first and foremost, that is not the case everywhere and I know colleagues that have been rejected as applicants specifically because they didn't have strong enough teaching credentials and interest. These were folks who as grad students viewed teaching as a distraction from research and distinctly deprioritized/tried to minimize time demands related to teaching. There were others who did the same and successfully landed research-focused jobs, but these folks really were among the best graduates (in the US, at least) in their sub-discipline and had a well-timed retirement leave the perfect job open at the perfect time. But there just aren't enough research-only jobs out there in my field that I personally feel comfortable with this approach. Better to be an all-research, all the time person as a postdoc when you generally can't teach, in my personal opinion.